Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Falsified African American History
Pondering the reasons why African Americans do not give the Republican Party a chance electorally used to be an interesting topic that was worthy of discussion. Many people used to point out that a significant number of black Americans hold social views that are in line with many of the Republican Party’s values. However, since the political emergence of Donald Trump on the national scene, and the mainstream right’s open embrace of far-right politics and unabashed xenophobia, it ceases to be a topic that carries any weight. What is still worthy of consideration, however, is the way that many nonblack, ethnic minority candidates have decided to use falsified African American history and blatant erasure in a way that allows them to appeal to white GOP voters. Recently, both of the Republican presidential candidates of Indian heritage, Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy, did this when answering questions from voters.
While campaigning in New Hampshire, Nikki Haley was asked what she thought was the cause of the American Civil War. She responded, “I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was gonna run. The freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do.” When pressed about her astonishingly empty answer that did not include the word “slavery.” Haley responded, “What do you want me to say about slavery? Next question.”
Nikki Haley’s answer was basically a long-winded way of saying “states’ rights,” which is a common euphemism used by Southerners and white supremacists to obscure the moral repugnance of what their ancestors were fighting for: the ability to continue engaging in the unbridled and uniquely barbaric practice of chattel slavery. Nikki Haley knew she would be lambasted for using those two words in answering that question, and she probably thought that using the word “slavery” may not have gone over well with voters in her home state, so we got her blabbering nonsense instead. In any event, Haley’s inability to speak forthrightly about American history vis-à-vis the black experience is evidence of her moral cowardice. Such an invertebrate careerist should never be close enough to American power to even sniff it. If this country has any standards, that gaffe should be the end of her campaign.
Speaking of people who should never be close to American political power, Vivek Ramaswamy was also on the campaign trail in Iowa recently, and he decided to throw a subliminal shot at Nikki Haley for her spineless answer failing to mention a basic fact of American history. He said, “We had slavery for 160 years. There was a civil war fought over it. Some people learned that later in life than others.” What is startling, however, is that Vivek himself then engaged in blatant ahistorical revisionism that was just as bad as Haley’s inability to cite the fact that the cause of the Civil War was slavery.
In the context of reverse racism, Vivek was asked about, per his own paraphrase, “historical injustices in this country, including power structures that may be based on inequalities grounded in race.” After the above quip directed at Nikki Haley, he then proceeded to paint a risibly false historical picture of an America that stopped oppressing black people in 1870. (Click the above picture to see his full answer for yourself.) At no point during his answer did he mention Jim Crow, redlining, the Tulsa Race Riots, or any other atrocities perpetrated against African Americans in the 20th century that have inarguable corollaries that can still be witnessed today. An answer on racial inequality that only highlights slavery is just as horrendously and shockingly ahistorical as an answer on the Civil War that erases slavery.
It is utterly implausible that Ivy League-educated Ramaswamy had never—even accidentally or by osmosis—in the course of his elite education heard about Jim Crow laws. He was simply presenting a falsified history to make it seem like there are no recent injustices created by American public policy for which African Americans should be seeking redress. If one opposes racialized public policy that favors African Americans, such a person should at least have the intellectual honesty to do so without advancing the arrantly preposterous position that America has essentially been idyllic for African Americans since the end of the 19th century. His prevarications and equivocations should demonstrate something that many people seem to forget: An elite education is not unassailable evidence of intellectual and moral maturity.
While Nikki and Vivek were both born in America, hence their constitutional eligibility to run for President of the United States, they are both children of immigrants. Without Civil Rights legislation brought about by fervent African American agitation for rights, immigration laws would have made it difficult for their parents to come to America. It is wholly reprehensible that nonblack ethnic minorities, who are only in position to run for President of the United States because of the sacrifices of African Americans, are using fictitious history to advance politically while throwing African Americans under the bus. If ADOS was a serious black intellectual movement, as opposed to being a black-fronted white supremacist movement (see my essay on the topic here), this is a point that they would be driving home.